


Reverse Field

by mimesere



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: POV Second Person, a really fucked up love story, could be read as gen - Freeform, i think it's a love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:01:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1989075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mimesere/pseuds/mimesere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What dreams may come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reverse Field

This is not your dream.

Flat night desert aside, which could be yours but you're pretty sure it's not, you don't generally dream of guns, and it was a gunshot that snapped you here, opening your eyes and landing you in the middle of nothing.

So. If this were therapy, someone could possibly do a vaguely Freudian deconstruction of this, but you skipped out on that in favor of...you don't remember. Maybe this is Jung. Maybe this is Jung in America. Maybe you need to wake up.

You're dreaming.

_Wake up._

Of course you don't. You didn't really expect that to work, even though it should have. Anyway.

You start walking and the sand slips beneath your feet (bare, like the rest of you. You reach up and touch your face, sighing quietly when it's all there and normal. Two eyes, a mouth, a nose, two ears. Eyebrows. Your hair. The scar behind your ear. That's not a shock.

You think it should be.

Should.).

When you fall, you get back up again and keep walking, and the sand keeps sliding away, but when you look back, there are no footprints anywhere. You're not going anywhere, and no one is carrying you.

You look around again. Still nothing.

This is indicative of your lack of drive. It represents your total lack of you-ness. It's symbolic of your emotional state.

The direction doesn't matter. You start walking again.

This is the dullest dream ever. Sand and sand and sand, unmarked by your passing.

This is what you think you mean to the world. This is what you're leaving behind.

When you fall this time, you don't bother getting up. Ennui, man. Such a bitch.

Your plan: to stay exactly where you are until you wake up.

The sky above you is pure black, without even a star to break the monotony. The sand, when you finally look at it, is white, like snow.

New Mexico. You're in New Mexico and you're dreaming of New Mexico and.

Yeah. You remember. No. You don't.

Miles and miles of nothing, broken up by still more nothing. You could scream and no one would notice.

You don't know how you're seeing anything.

Take a deep breath, you order, and you do. You're gonna do it. You're gonna scream.

Scream.

You let the breath out slowly, quietly, and scramble up. There's sand all in your hair, and in your mouth, and in your eyes.

Take a deep breath. You cough. Another. It hurts your chest to hold your breath in like this, but you hold it until you feel empty, and then you do it. A scream, a wail, a howl.

And in such a way as this was the world born. Give it sound, one sound, and everything shivers into place. That's it. That's why it's never quiet except in your head where you try not to live anymore.

Lightning, and in the afterimage, color. You blink, and the color stays. Blue and gray. Red. Yellow.

And there. There. Something else in the sand.

You start running, but you fall more often now, and whatever that is just gets further and further away. Stop.

The far away thing stops.

You take a step forward, and it doesn't move. Okay. Okay, you can catch it if you want to. It's the way out.

You run again, and fall, and after you've wiped the sand out of your eyes, it's gone again. There's more sand in your hair, and you can't shake it out, no matter what you do. It's on your face, but less, on your eyebrows and eyelashes, so that whenever you blink, the edges of what you can see are blurry and white.

So. You have to walk.

Fine. Walking. You've been walking all your life; you can do this.

It's still boring.

You still haven't woken up.

You're still walking.

And you can *see* it, the far away thing, and it's getting closer with every step. That's the way out. It's something to believe.

Keep walking. Patience is what does it, what you need to get there, and somewhere inside, you think this is maybe a punishment. You don't think you're a very patient person.

This is forever. Reverse field. Forever is black sand and black sky, walking all alone until you get to the end. You don't *want* it. Forever is the worst thought you've ever had.

You stop, looking at the thing. It's closer now, and you still don't know what it is. One minute huge and steady, the next small and wavering, heat shimmer in front of your eyes and still blinded white at the edges, like a dream. Like a stupid, stupid dream you saw on t.v.

That's the way out, that's the end. That's what you're going for.

You start again, but you haven't gone more than a few steps when you get dizzy and fall. When you open your eyes, the sand is black-red.

Your feet are bleeding, you realize. They've been bleeding for a while.

You look back. There are footsteps now, patchy and incomplete, but *there*. And as you look, the sand swallows them up, covers them, until you can only see them when you close your eyes.

They were there. And in front of you (in back now, until you turn around) is the end.

You stand up. You walk.

The thing is two things. Three. Four. Two trees. A person. And something else. You don't know what.

One of the trees is tall and flowering, bearing fruit at the same time and that, you know, is completely wrong. Completely.

The flowers are red and white; you know a story about flowers; you've forgotten. But you did know.

The other tree is twisted and broken. Your subconscious is not huge with the subtlety. The tree's roots poke up out of the ground, half-covered with dirt still. They look like arms and hands and legs, reaching up to catch you.

Stupid. _stupid_.

No fruit on this tree, no flowers, and the leaves are sad things, shivering in the complete lack of wind.

And. The person.

Naked, like you are. Crouching, his back to you. His hair is white.

He has hair. He's not you, then.

You repeat that: he's not you.

You don't touch him, just walk carefully around until you're in front, and then you can see the fourth thing. A bird. A big black bird.

The guy is staring at the bird. There's blood on his hands and a knife in one fist.

Oh, you think. He's cut it open, and the insides have spilled out all over, and it should smell, like blood at least, but it doesn't. You can't smell anything.

You reach up again. Check. Yes, you still have a nose.

He doesn't look at you, even when you clear your throat, when you say, "Hey," he doesn't move at all.

Then you touch him on the shoulder (you don't remember moving closer, but obviously you did), and his skin is cold under your fingers, leeching the warmth out, like metal.

You can't step back. You just stand there while all the heat inside you bleeds out through your fingers, and you can see it inside him, flush of warmth through the skin. And movement.

He moves because you made it happen. Reaches forward, flips the knife delicately in his hand, until he's holding it like a scalpel.

This is how he did it.

He slices through the breastbone, and blood wells up in a line along the cut, red cutting through the black feathers. White underneath that, when he pushes the skin aside and reveals bone.

You hear a crack, and it's only then that you realize how quiet it is.

He's cracked open the breastbone and you watch as he spreads that open as carefully as he did the skin. Skin, then bone, then inside.

You can hear your heartbeat wildly, way too fast. This should be killing you.

He slides the knife in, tiny tiny opening, and it shouldn't fit, but somehow it does, and all you see is his wrist move subtly.

He puts the knife down beside the bird (it's a raven you see now, but you don't know how you know) and reaches into the space he's cleared. Delicately, carefully, and it's not the weirdness it should be to watch this. He reaches in.

You want to turn away. This is something you don't need to see. But you're frozen in place, and you can see yourself, which is fucked, standing there beside the crouching man and the bird even while you're looking down at him.

The heart is in his hands.

The heart is beating.

Its beat matches yours, or yours matches its, and it hurts your ears to listen to.

You step back, cover your ears with your hands and you want to close your eyes, but you can't.

His hands are red now, bright shocking red. Oxygenated, your mind supplies.

He looks up at you and you take another step back. He smiles, and his eyes smile, and that's fucked, this is not your dream, this is not you. This is terror and it's not, because it's not a scary smile at all. Nothing there to be afraid of, because even the eyes are sad and angry and mocking.

The raven's heart is still beating in time with yours.

He's still looking at you when he reaches up with the heart held in the tips of his fingers. You watch as he feeds it to his left eye, watch as it disappears behind the teeth, without even a stain of red to mark its passing.

Your heart stops. Stops.

You drop your hands.


End file.
